1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method for preventing system invalidation, and more specifically to a method for preventing system invalidation by activating one of the spare electronic devices to take over the operation performed by the primary electronic device which accidentally fails, so as to prevent the whole system from being invalidated or crashing.
2. The Prior Arts
Many high-end electronic devices require very stable and reliable operational efficiency, like 24-hour running for a considerable long term. In general, some typical examples are the high-end business server providing electronic business service for banks and network transactions, the real time surveillance apparatus closely monitoring important and crucial sites such as airports and nuclear electric power plant, the supervision system providing special long-term security and door guarding, the control management system managing traffic signs, electric power transmission lines and military weapons, or the confidential intra-network system interconnecting government departments.
To meet the requirement of high stability and reliability for the above-mentioned devices or systems, the manufacturers usually have to employ specific, costly electric components with excellent stability of operation, or dramatically increase the safety factor of the design. However, each component inherently has some risk of invalidation, and any design with high tolerance may also suffer accidental invalidation due to the actual engineering variation in processing and manufacturing. Thus, certain discrete components accidentally failing may invalidate the whole system to crash or even result in permanent damage or serious loss, such as lives or properties.
To overcome the problem, the commonly used solution in the prior arts is to utilize one additional backup device with the same function as the current working device. As a result, the backup device can take over the original task performed by the working device which fails to normally operate so as to keep the normal service and operation of the whole system. Take the network system for electronic business as an example, the user at the client terminal can use the PC to connect to the remote server site through wire or wireless internet. The remote server site is usually provided with the first and second servers. The first server is the primary control device and the second server is used as the backup device. Meanwhile, the first and second servers are communicated with each other via network, particular mechanism or specific interface. In other words, the first server is configured to provide network transaction service, and the second device is preset in the standby state. Therefore, when the first device is out of function and invalidated, the second server may take over the first server to continue the task performed by the first server such that the electronic business transaction will not be terminated and the user can continue the ongoing operation without sensing any abnormal happening.
However, one of the shortcomings in the prior arts is that the second device is a standalone device, and each of the first and second devices generally has different preset and/or dynamic settings in the respective BIOS (Basic Input Output System), MAC (Media Access Control) address for network controller and the display interface due to actual application such that the software configured in the second device may not immediately be used to take over the task of the first device. Thus, the second device often has to perform the synchronization process for a period of time to backup all the data temporarily processed by the first device for subsequent processes. As a result, it needs to install several packages of software, leading the cost for software license fee to dramatically increase, and even perform additional power-on/power-off procedure to guarantee the correctness of the data during the processes of transferring, copying and updating.
Therefore, it needs to provide a method for preventing system invalidation without installing more than one package of software to implement smoothly switching to the spare electronic device from the primary electronic device accidentally failing in functional operation so as to prevent the whole system from crashing or being invalidated due to some abnormal discrete devices, thereby overcoming the above problems in the prior arts.